Twitterfall makes Twitter parties sparkle.

I was thinking about how some “Twitter parties” revolve around a real-time Twitterfall projected on a wall.

Participants go about their party business, but constantly add tweets—appending each with the party’s hashtag (e.g., #med2) which can be fed into Twitterfall search.

The result is fascinating live information about what’s popular in the conversation.

And yeah, people are using it! Last February, the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph made big news when they revealed that their integrated newroom featured Twitterfall projected right up “traditional” video feeds from heavyweights like BBC and CNN:

However, maybe you’re thinking: so why not just talk to people? Isn’t that the point of a party?

Sure. But I think that good topics easily get lost in a mishmash of party conversations.

I’ve sat in a meeting room with 10 people where 5 different conversations were going on and 1 word caught the attention of 8 people who suddenly perked up and wanted to be caught up on that 1 topic. Or maybe those 5 conversations were actually trending the same topic, but no one knew, so they didn’t engage with each other afterwards?

We are drowning in information yet thirsting for knowledge. How do you “see” a trend?

You can discuss, and listen, and overhear, but you’re only one person. How do you know what is being discussed? How do you know HOW it’s being discussed?

And what does this have to do with medicine?

The New Health Care needs to address some very 21st-century problems.

Support groups have been around forever. Some successful ones are electronic, like the wonderful breast cancer listserv of my home province, Newfoundland. Some are quite informal, just common folks getting together.

Now, as our life expectancies continue to grow, and we’re faced with the very 21st-century challenges of prevention of disease and management of chronic conditions, these group settings become very important.

Patients are recognizing the need to supplement the doctor-patient relationship. Patients want to talk to each other. Especially if they’re going to be in the tough spot for the long haul. This is why a community like PatientsLikeMe — targeted especially to incurable conditions — has absolutely thrived.

The case for Twitter-supplemented group medical visits.

You receive an appointment to see your doctor together with 10 – 20 other patients who also have the same condition as you (e.g., high blood pressure or diabetes)

You get to spend about one hour with your Doctor discussing your condition and any other pertinent health problems that you may have.

You also get to speak to a Nutritionist or Health Educator and to learn from other patients who are also in your group

The Group Medical Visit is like the party.

We might get lots of great discussion, but wouldn’t it be nice if a portion of the visit could focus on addressing “trending topics”? So, once again:

Take 10 minutes at the midpoint of the visit and have everyone tweet their feelings, keywords, anything.

Visualize in real-time with Twitterfall.

Discuss, discuss, discuss!

*Alternatively, Twitterfall could be used for traditional non-face-to-face Twitter parties of a set duration. People from different locations, including remote ones, get terrific real-time information, but it’s easier to analyze than a text or video chat. And you don’t necessarily have to be sitting at the computer the entire time.

The Tweet Stream is organic.

Advantages:

ideas arrive in parallel, yet are still discrete and understandable

less intimidating than yelling out an opinion

both individual words and longer ideas can be trended

trending topics and phrases auto-generated (the big concerns rise to the top)Update (Feb. 6th, 2010): Ok, I just checked and Twitterfall actually doesn’t have this functionality yet. But Tweetdeck does! There’s a button at the bottom of each column “Show what’s popular in this column” which comes up with a tag cloud of terms, ids, and hashtags.

you get way more ideas than a traditional whiteboard brainstorm

Another way to look at it: the Google-fu argument!

Tweets are great. 140 characters is just enough to accommodate concepts…but also phrasing, context, and emotions.

Your Google-fu ~= my Google-fu!

Dr. Schwimmer (@JoshuaSchwimmer) posted this great screenshot on Google’s search suggestions for the phrase “doctor’s are”. Just look at the diversity (and perversity?)! And that’s only given the first 2 words of the query!

Now imagine a Group Medical Visit. What are the concerns of the 20 people in the room? And with what terminology would they express themselves if left to their own devices?

It’s just too hard to identify these subtleties in a crowded room. And the New Health Care is supposed to be about finding your voice.

So that’s the idea!

For a fascinating example of simple Twitter meta-analysis, have a look at:

While the concept of trending in such a scenario seems like it would be useful, I don't really see why Twitter needs to be involved. Surely a single computer with the correct peripherals could achieve the same effect. I, for one, would not feel any more comfortable sharing my medical concerns over Twitter than in a regular discussion.

http://www.hospitalsongs.com/ Elizabeth Han

True, Twitter itself doesn't have to be involved. I guess people are always wary of using specific companies' products to do something so personal. But the design of a tweet and the way that Twitterfall compiles them is significant. Like you said, this could be mimicked.

Perhaps the use of the idea for bringing together remote communities is more palatable? I just don't see a traditional IM chat or video conference (the way we use them now) doing the job.

Thanks for your comment!

http://qulogic.blogspot.com/ Elliott

Yes, I would say the tweet design (comment-in-140-characters, etc.) is important. Making the peripherals would be easy (easier than our design project). Not sure about Twitterfall's search/trending (maybe Lucene or one of those document-based DBs); display is easy, though.

Bringing together remote communities is a bit more interesting. In that case, the costs of setting up a shared resource for discussion are probably not as reasonable (depends on the interests of the doctor, I suppose). You'd want something simple and easy to set up. But the question of privacy might still come up from the patients. I've never been in a group discussion about a medical condition, so I guess I just don't know the exact response to the idea.

And I would agree that video conference wouldn't work out as well. It's roughly the same, maybe worse, than just having the group in person. I sometimes find it's easier to get my point across in traditional IM, but if there's a few fast typists, they might tend to overwhelm the rest of the group. And without the trending, other important views could get lost there.

http://www.hospitalsongs.com/ Elizabeth Han

Re: privacy… I've scoured the net for info on whether Twitterfall will display protected tweets if you're logged in to your Twitter account, but no luck so far. On further rumination, I think this would work in Tweetdeck:

1. All the patients in the group ideally already have a 'medical' Twitter account, set to Protected2. Doctor becomes a follower of all the patients. Patients authorize the doctor's account to view their tweets.3. Doctor creates a Protected Twitter list for the group e.g., @DoctorX/diabetes and adds the members4. Doctor logs into Tweetdeck, creates a column for the list — the column is what will get projected on the wall5. Done! And this sort of solves the 'Twitterfall does not currently spit out trends in your results' problem, since Tweetdeck generates a tag cloud for each column.

If the same group meets quite often, it might be worth it.

But you're right – a solution developed in-house especially for this purpose would avoid ickiness. At the end of the day, Twitter succeeds because it broadcasts to strangers. At least that's why I like it way more than Facebook right now. There are actually thriving communities of patients on Twitter (hashtags like #diabetes and #fibromyalgia are quite popular) who have no qualms about posting about their glucometer readings and hospital visits. However, those people are looking to broaden their network/support group. When you've already got one, as in the Group Medical Visit, the approach must be adapted.

This is an interesting idea. I have conducted >30 group visits at the Emory Clinic in Atlanta, primarily for diabetic patients, but also for chronically ill smokers. Most of my attendees were not particularly technologically savvy, and rather seemed to be people who enjoyed socializing and talking in a more traditional way. Also, I've found group visits particulary successful with older patients. To me the interesting part of this would be not in using this during the group visit–but in continuing the discussion between group visits–to enhance the support role of the group outside of the office. One could then review the trending topics at the next follow-up group.

http://www.hospitalsongs.com/ Elizabeth Han

Hi Juliet – thanks for sharing! Definitely, the traditional discussion is probably the focal point of the group medical visit. Like you, another commenter also felt that the Twitter discussion might be better for keeping a group together while they are not seeing each other – and especially useful for patients in remote areas to keep in touch. I would love to try this!

To be able to review the trending topics at the next follow-up group is such an excellent idea. We would need a tool to collect the tweets over at least a few days time, which I am currently unable to find. Setting up a Tweetdeck column could work, since the maximum # of tweets in a column can be adjusted, and at the bottom there is an option to show “what is popular in this column”. I'll definitely post about it if I find something.